DENVER | Colorado has seen feisty debates this fall, with candidates in close races for governor, Senate and the U.S. House arguing over abortion rights, energy policy and the death penalty. Just don’t expect any of them to talk much about the biggest news of the year: legal pot.
While the state’s 10-month-old marijuana retail experiment has received worldwide attention and sales of recreational and medical pot have generated more than $45 million for state coffers, most voters have collectively shrugged. Predictions that they would go scrambling back to the polls to repeal the legal pot law they passed in 2012 haven’t yet materialized.
Instead, the political landscape has changed, with some candidates, including the governor, accepting tens of thousands of dollars in donations from people within the fledgling pot industry.
Now, the only ones bringing it up on the campaign trail are third-party and independent hopefuls — all backers of legal pot. Many of them take issue with the state’s high pot taxes — more than 30 percent in many jurisdictions — or with regulations they consider onerous.
“I don’t know why politicians aren’t talking about this,” said independent gubernatorial candidate Mike Dunafon, a long-shot candidate who is touting endorsements from rappers Snoop Dogg and Wyclef Jean because of his embrace of the drug.
Maybe it’s because the major-party candidates almost universally agree. They say when asked that they personally opposed making the drug legal but respect the voters’ wishes. And while the marijuana rollout has not been without problems, including concerns about children getting potent edible pot, there have been no public-safety problems widespread enough to focus voters’ minds on a repeal effort.
“The people of Colorado have made their decision,” said Republican Rep. Cory Gardner, who is challenging Democratic Sen. Mark Udall in a race that could determine whether Republicans pick up enough seats to take control of the chamber.
Gardner and Udall were asked about pot this week in their final debate.
“I opposed it when it happened,” Gardner said of the 2012 marijuana vote. “But the founders always intended the states to be laboratories of democracy, and right now we are deep in the heart of the laboratory.”
Udall agreed. “We need to work together as a delegation to make sure the federal government butts out and lets us continue this experiment,” Udall said at the Denver debate.
Marijuana isn’t playing a big role in the tight governor’s race. Both Democratic Gov. John Hickenlooper and Republican Bob Beauprez oppose legal marijuana.
After an Oct. 6 debate in which the governor jokingly called the pot vote “reckless,” Hickenlooper’s aides reached out to marijuana industry workers — a move that underscored the sensitivity with which officials are dealing with a nascent industry that is generating revenue and making campaign donations.
A single pot-industry fundraiser for the governor raised some $40,000 last summer. The industry has also given at least $20,000 this year to congressional candidates.
Pressed at another debate to clarify whether he thought marijuana legalization should be repealed — an action that would require another public vote — the governor took a milder tack. “I’m not going to go as far as to say we should lead an effort to make it illegal. I think that that would be premature,” he said.
Beauprez has said legal pot should be reconsidered, but stopped short of saying he’d lead a repeal effort.
Politicians’ marijuana hesitance reflects voters’ indifference on the topic. A September NBC/Marist poll asked residents about the law allowing adults over 21 to buy recreational pot. Thirty-three percent said they opposed the law but were “not actively trying to have it overturned.” Eight percent said they were working to overturn it.
Third-party and independent candidates, however, are sometimes making pot the hallmark of their campaigns, even in local races.
In a western Colorado state Senate contest, Libertarian candidate Lee Mulcahy has been throwing free dinners serving marijuana-infused foods. Voters have to show they’re 21 before noshing on foods like yellowtail crudo with coconut-ginger sativa oil and a salad tossed in marijuana-infused vinaigrette.
“It’s so fascinating, the reluctance of my opponents to even say the word cannabis,” he said. “Voters want to be talking about this, but the major-party candidates have to tow the party line. They’ve all been coached to not say anything. I’m simply amazed.”
___
Kristen Wyatt can be reached at https://www.twitter.com/APkristenwyatt
This article is erroneous in its assumptions and completely wrong in its conclusion; cannabis is playing a very significant role in the election. Because our news media have suppressed information about the counterrevolution against semi-licit cannabis in Colorado, most people in the state are unaware of the fact that our anti-representatives in the General Assembly and Gov. Hack reinstituted all the felonies for cannabis last year (while increasing their maximum severity to a Class 1 felony like premeditated murder; see SB13-250, C.R.S. 18-18-406). The claim that “Colorado legalized marijuana”, which ostensible journalists have repeated ad nauseam for the better part of two years, is a Big Lie, and the evidence is in our statutes, which pretend to make felonious conduct explicitly protected by Article XVIII, Section 16 of our Constitution. Voters do not know the particulars (and, in this case, are largely misled as to most of the facts) but the monumental hypocrisy of the parties dominating our politics is sensed nonetheless. People who use cannabis regularly in Colorado and are active voters may comprise only ~3% of the population, but other, libertarian-minded voters do not like the State’s attempt to repudiate the express will of the People as enshrined in our Constitution through statutes and regulations which do not comport with it, and they are less likely to support Gov. Hack as a result. The Governor’s hostility towards cannabis may be less than that of Bob Beauprez, but it is manifest — Hack’s determined undermining of the support of various elements of his base (with regard to fracking and the privatization of public roads as well as cannabis) has been a politically suicidal course for Collaborationists (Democrats), who are outnumbered in Colorado both by Fascists (Republicans) and by unaffiliated voters. There are several other gubernatorial candidates who support our right to use cannabis; I cast my vote for unaffiliated libertarian Mike Dunafon two days ago. Gov. Hack has made many missteps, but this prohibitionist’s stance on cannabis, so far from “playing little role in Colorado politics”, may cost him re-election. The vote for independents who oppose Prohibition is likely to be elevated, and the media will not be able to completely suppress the intelligence that they polled much higher in the wake of this election.